Current issues regarding the quality and reproducibility of published biomedical research studies
Librarians are excellently positioned to raise awareness of the importance of complete, accurate and transparent reporting of research studies amongst the clinicians and researchers with whom they work and the EQUATOR Network is keen to help support librarians with these activities.

There has been much discussion and concern in the medical literature recently about the quality and reproducibility of published biomedical research studies and what actions can be taken to address this global issue (please visit the Lancet Waste series and campaign and the REWARD Alliance web pages for more information). Librarians, through identification of new opportunities to provide additional research support, can play an important role in addressing these issues by working with clinicians and researchers to improve the quality of the research studies published by their organisations and institutions.

There are many ways that librarians can help to promote reporting guidelines and contribute to increasing value and reducing waste in biomedical research.
In direct response to the Lancet waste series, we at EQUATOR, wrote a blog post outlining some ideas [download a pdf of the blog post].

A recent blog post by JoVE also raised awareness of the role of librarians and highlighted resources from the EQUATOR Network designed to support librarians in helping to improve research reporting and reproducibility.

We have also tried to raise awareness of the contribution that biomedical librarians could make in working together with researchers, clinicians, journals and funding bodies to increase value and reduce waste in research in a comment article published in the Lancet in April 2016.

In May 2017, we presented at the MLA Research Reproducibility Symposium on the topic of ‘The essential role of librarians in addressing biomedical research reporting and reproducibility issues: a call to action’. The presentation slides are available at: Research Reproducibility Symposium 2017

In June 2017, in collaboration with colleagues, we delivered a workshop at the joint International Congress of Medical Librarianship (ICML) / European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) conference in Dublin, Ireland on the topic of ‘Librarians can help address reporting concerns in the biomedical literature, particularly for systematic reviews’. All the slides and content from the workshop can be accessed at: ICML/EAHIL workshop 2017

What can librarians do?If you would like to raise awareness about reporting guidelines amongst your library users through promotion, education or researcher support please see the list below for some ideas:

Include information about reporting guidelines in library induction sessions

Hold research reporting workshops

Researcher support

When supporting the work of clinicians and researchers mention relevant reporting guidelines and how to locate them

When presenting the results of literature searches to researchers alert them to the appropriate reporting guideline for reporting their study

Action plans for LibrariansIn May 2017 we launched two action plans with suggested actions that biomedical librarians could take locally within their library services to help to address international issues of research reporting and reproducibility.

Examples of what libraries are currently doing
Increasingly, biomedical librarians are recognising the importance of providing information and links to resources from their library web pages that promote reporting guidelines and support transparency and research reproducibility. The image below simply provides a snapshot of the numerous libraries around the world that currently do so.

Collaborate with us?
We are currently working with the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto on a project to help raise awareness of reporting and reproducibility issues during the systematic review process by helping researchers and clinicians to develop review protocols and use relevant reporting guidelines. Learn more about this collaboration.

If you would like to find out more about collaborating with us to help to improve research reporting and increase value and reduce waste in biomedical research then please contact: Shona Kirtley, shona.kirtley@csm.ox.ac.uk

We are very keen to work with biomedical librarians to help address these global issues.

Toolkit development plans
We are in the process of developing resources (documents, presentations, leaflets/posters, videos, e-learning etc.) specifically to help librarians and information specialists address international issues such as research waste and research reproducibility, promote reporting guidelines, hold research reporting workshops and provide the clinicians with whom they work with the relevant reporting guidelines for their research studies. Whilst we develop these we have brought together some useful general introductory resources for you to use and have included links to these below.

General introductory resources

Why librarians working in the health sector are excellently positioned to raise awareness about reporting guidelines and encourage their use through promotion, education and researcher support

We encourage you to download or print EQUATOR leaflets to display in your library or distribute to clinicians and researchers [Download EQUATOR leaflet]

Librarian Network
We also intend to develop training resources specifically aimed at librarians/information specialists so that they can feel confident when including information about reporting guidelines in their induction sessions, when running reporting guideline workshops or simply when talking to clinicians about reporting their research. We aim to do this through establishing a free to join international librarian and information specialist network which will allow us to provide further practical support to librarians by providing librarian training, Q&A sessions, regular support webinars, an email discussion list, and an opportunity for librarians to share their experiences about raising awareness of research reporting guidelines and explore possible collaborations.

We plan to partner with other organisations to translate all materials to ensure that librarians/information specialists can deliver reporting guideline information and training sessions to clinicians and researchers in their local language.

We are very keen for biomedical librarians to get involved…please do consider:

Volunteering to join our advisory group or become a country representative

Contributing your ideas and experiences to our toolkit development and resources

Suggesting ideas for other relevant activities that the Network could support or possible funding opportunities to support the development of our Librarian Network